remember (what everyone else forgets)

I was sort of dreading the trip back east to the family reunion. The whole idea of reuniting with people who I felt I had nothing in common with seemed like a chore, an obligation. My strongest memories of this side of the family are the two-dozen or so cousins I would see once a year, those who would tease me for reading inside while everyone else was outside playing hockey. These are the guys who couldn't believe I knew nothing whatsoever about the big game that was playing on TV on Thanksgiving. I would just be patient and wait for it to be over. More recently, I would see these cousins at my sisters' weddings, and it was hard to explain the academic job search, how you could be a "doctor" and still have a hard time making ends meet, the problem of adjunct teaching at four different campuses, what I was writing about, not to mention the queer thing. It was easier to speak in vague generalities like, "Yeah, I like living in Houston" and "Teaching is going well" and then direct the conversation back to easier subjects like marriage and kids.

My older sister is the one who told me that my anxieties were largely a part of a family hangover, and that this is the side of the family who I should feel most connected to -- tall, goofy-looking, working class people with yellow teeth who are just as socially and physically awkward as I am. I didn't really believe it until H. and I showed up for the "day in the park" picnic. Throngs of cousins and their kids stood in what looked like uncomfortable half-circles, smiling in their baseball caps and sunglasses, waiting to figure out what was going to happen next. I thought to myself, if I can walk into a classroom of thirty complete strangers and act like I was born inside a university, then I can, surely, mix in with this group of blood relatives. And so I did. I plunged right in, tapping into that energy that makes me "go" when I'm teaching. I walked right up to somewhat familiar faces and re-introduced myself and H. I turned to give a hug to the next person and asked the kids if their teeth had been stolen or if they fell out on their own. I easily made my way from young to old as if I belonged to this family more than anyone else did.

It was, of course, exhausting, but it mixed things up just right, and before I knew it, the shy, quiet, high strung boy who felt radically alienated from everyone else was gone, and, for the first time, I had animated conversations with all sorts of people in my family, who seemed as relieved as I was that I had lost my fear of being the black sheep.

Alcohol is important to this side of the family, sometimes dangerously so. It was both interesting and a little unsettling to see what happened when the bar opened towards dinner. Certainly the bonds formed in the park over whiffle ball, kite-flying, and hoagie-eating became, in the evening, more lubricated with the addition of old-fashions, manhattans, side-cars, beers, wine, and lots and lots of cigarettes. At one point, late, I realized that half the family was trashed and telling wild stories at the top of their lungs and the other half was slumped over a half-empty drink, ready for bed. In the room where the bar was, a couple of poster boards had baby pictures of everyone in attendance ("Guess the Baby" was a game you could play), along with a couple of candid shots from over the years. One of the candids was an enormously embarrassing photograph of my cousins and me from the mid-1980s. In it, I am fourteen or fifteen. My hair is, like, shorn up the sides and off at a gigantic, bizarre pointy angle to the left side of my head. I am emaciated, with bad acne. A pair of round metal glasses sits on my nose. I'm wearing all black. And even though everyone else in the photo has bad mullets and big permed hair, clad in white jeans and day-glo t-shirts, I am the one who everyone sees as an index of 80s poor taste. The thing to do at this point in the reunion is to yell "Flock of Seagulls!" or "Devo!" and then use your hands to shape an imaginary new wave hairdo before collapsing in laughter. I do it, too, to make sure eveyone knows I am not shy, not the outsider. Then I catch the eye of my cousin T., who I have only met once, and we step out for a smoke.

I remember T. from when we were both eleven. She came to visit my family for about a week, during which time we spent an entire day floating in inner-tubes down the Delaware river. This is all I remember. She's my father's sister's daughter, adopted. We clumsily began a conversation remembering the tubing trip, and then went in circles, talking about her search for her biological parents and the hurt she felt when they were rude to her, telling her to go back to her adoptive parents. We talked about feeling like outsiders, like black sheep. As a teenager, I remember hearing that she was always in trouble, although I don't know exactly what that means, now. I have a cousin on the other side of my family who once accused me of the same thing -- "You were in a lot of trouble in high school, weren't you?" Trouble? It's not something you ever think you are in -- just the way your life goes, unlike regular teenagers' lives, yours will be trouble. We smiled about this, finishing cigarettes.

Then T. asked me what I knew about why her mother and my father were taken from our grandparents as kids. This is something that I always forget to remember -- when my father and his three older sisters were children, they were taken, by the state, from my grandparents. They were also separated from each other. The sisters were put in different foster homes, and my father was put in an orphanage. No one really knows why. One result was that T.'s mother was very badly abused. Eventually, my grandparents regained custody of their kids, and the reason why it happened was never, ever talked about. When my father has asked people from his parents' generation why this happened, he cannot get a straight answer because the response has always been, "Your mother always loved you kids and you better believe she fought tooth and nail to get you back." T.'s interesting observation of this is that, as terrible as the situation was, she believes that the trauma my aunt grew up with is what brought her to adopt her children, and that, had the abuse never taken place, my cousin T. might never have been my cousin.

I really enjoyed this conversation because it was a strange, intimate moment in which secrets were shared and a mystery emerged. It was a serious talk, and it also reminded me why this reunion was, in fact, of historical significance. I come from a family that came very close to being torn apart. My father and his sisters, who organized the reunion, are now the oldest members of the family. The outside conversation with T. shows that those who have always felt the most outside the family can, finally, come together and talk, and that, importantly, we are the ones who will remember what everyone else almost forgets.